No. 3087

Pie, Apple, Peach or Rhubarb

Tarte aux Pommes, aux Peches ou a la Rhubarbe

Prepare a tart paste (No. 149). Cut into quarters six or eight very ripe apples or fine, tender peaches; range them in layers in a pie dish, besprinkle with sugar, and dress them in a dome form. Wet the edges of the dish and cover it with a band of the paste, half an inch wide by an eighth of an inch in thickness; wet this band also with a fine brush, and cover the fruits and this band with a rolled-out flat of the same paste; press it down on the base of the dome, and then on the band, so as to have the two adhere. Cut the paste even with the edge of the dish, and scallop it all around with a small knife, pressing the paste heavily with the left thumb, and cutting it at short intervals from the bottom to the top to raise the gash slightly, so that when cooking the paste will rise in relief. Brush over the top with water, and decorate with a few fanciful cuts of the same paste, then egg the surface with beaten eggs. Stand the pie on a small baking tin and push it into a slack oven to cook for forty-five minutes, then bestrew with sugar, and leave to glaze in a hot oven. Instead of egging the pie may be simply moistened with water and lightly covered with powdered sugar.

Rhubarb Pie.—Select fine tender stalks of rhubarb. Remove the leaves, wash and peel the stalks, then cut them up transversely in pieces three-quarters of an inch long; arrange these in layers in a pie dish intermingled with sugar, and cover and finish the same as the above apple or peach pies.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A deep-dish fruit pie with a top crust only, built in the English manner but written in French. Two details carry it: the fruit must be mounded high enough to support the lid, and the oven starts low and finishes hot.

Oven temperaturesRanhofer gives no numbers. A "slack" oven is usually read today as somewhere around 275–325°F, and the finishing "hot oven" for the sugar glaze as 425–450°F. The long slow bake cooks the fruit through without bursting the seams, and the final blast caramelises the sugar in a few minutes — watch it, as it goes from glazed to scorched quickly.
The paste bandThe strip of pastry pressed onto the wetted rim of the dish is the hinge of the whole construction. Without it the lid has nothing to grip and will slide off the fruit as the filling settles. Use the same dough, a scant half-inch wide, and dampen it before laying on the top sheet.
Dome the fruitThe quarters must be heaped into a proper mound, higher at the centre than the rim. A flat filling leaves the crust suspended over a void, and it will collapse into the juices. If your fruit is shallow, an inverted eggcup or a pie funnel in the centre does the same work.
Tart paste No. 149Ranhofer sends you to a separate tart paste recipe, not reproduced here; roll it thin — about an eighth of an inch, the thickness he specifies for the band. Any good pâte brisée or all-butter shortcrust will stand in. Chill it before it goes into the oven so the scalloped edge holds its relief.
Sugar is left to youNo quantity is given for the sugar strewn between the layers. For six to eight apples reckon on 1/2 to 3/4 cup; rhubarb needs considerably more, closer to a cup, and benefits from a tablespoon of flour or cornstarch tossed through to bind the very loose juice.
Peeling rhubarbRanhofer says to peel the stalks, which older, coarser rhubarb may well have needed. Modern forced or garden stalks rarely do; trim the ends and pull off any obvious strings. The leaves are genuinely toxic and must go, as the recipe says — the stalks alone are eaten.
Peaches"Fine, tender peaches" points to fruit at full ripeness, easily quartered. Skins are best slipped off with a brief scald first, or they curl into leathery threads in the filling during the long slow bake.
Two finishes, not bothEither egg-wash the top before baking, or moisten with water and dust with sugar — the recipe offers these as alternatives. The egg gives a deeper colour; the sugar gives a crisp, sanded crust. The final strewing of sugar before the hot oven applies to both.
YieldSix to eight apples will fill a large deep dish, of the order of 9 to 10 inches, and serve six to eight. Set it on a baking sheet as directed, since fruit pies of this depth almost always weep.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast reference book he compiled during his long tenure as chef at Delmonico's in New York, a post he still held when the book appeared and left in 1896. The French title is a courtesy: what is described is not a French tarte, which is open and built on a pastry base, but an English-American deep-dish pie with a lid and no bottom crust, of the kind that had been standard in American households for generations. Ranhofer's book routinely does this: it gives a dish a French name and then teaches it with the precision of a professional pastry kitchen, down to the exact width of the rim band and the technique for nicking the edge so it lifts in relief. Rhubarb appears here because by the late nineteenth century it was thoroughly domesticated in the northern United States, where it was widely known as "pie plant" for the obvious reason: it was among the earliest things a kitchen garden yielded in spring, and pie was what it was for.